Tiago Splitter is ready. Jarrett Jack is not quite there.
The Hawks open training camp next week with two players coming off significant injuries that ended their campaigns last season. Both will be training camp participates – to varying degrees – after off-season surgeries.
Splitter was plagued by injury in his first season with the Hawks after being acquired from the Spurs. The center’s season was eventually cut short in February by surgery on his right hip after he appeared in just 36 games. The original diagnosis called for an eight-month rehabilitation.
“With Tiago, everyone is really happy with his progress,” Hawks coach Mike Budenholzer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. “With the hip, if you are just talking specifically about the hip, everybody feels like it couldn’t be going much better. Now, it’s getting all the muscles and everything that goes into being ready to play up to speed. We are expecting him to participate in camp, maybe not at 100 percent participation but significant. I think more of the scrimmaging and real basketball stuff to see how he is doing and be conscientious that whenever we use him it’s in real live basketball environment.”
Jack joined the Hawks as a free agent this summer. The guard’s season with the Nets was cut short after 32 games with a torn ACL in his right knee. Budenholzer said that Jack will be brought along slowly and won’t be a full participant to start training camp.
“He is doing well,” Budenholzer said of Jack. “You always are optimistic that (recovery time) is on the shorter end. I’ve told him, and he knows, we are always going to err on the side of caution. Easing him into camp and easing him into exhibition games. To some degree the next week to 10 days will tell us more. He is going to be, I would say, not a full participant starting in Athens but he will do some things.”
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